NLD Reaffirms Priorities of Peace and Reconciliation

NLD members arrive at the party's headquarters in Yangon to celebrate the 29th founding anniversary on Wednesday. ( Photo: Thet Tun Naing / The Irrawaddy)

YANGON – The National League for Democracy (NLD) party has vowed a brighter future for the nascent democracy and a commitment to peace and a federal Union, in its statement released on Wednesday.

On the occasion of the 29th anniversary of the founding of the NLD, the party announced that “we will not divert or deviate from the democratic path due to challenges and pressures and are committed to forming a better, more modernized and pleasant one.”

The statement continued that the party was currently fighting for national dignity and sovereignty while also combating violence, terrorism, allegations and “media traps.”

“We are still defending ourselves against media attempts to tarnish our reputation at the UN and in the international community,” said U Han That Myint, a party chairman, at the opening of the anniversary ceremony at the NLD headquarters in Yangon.

He added that recent terrorist attacks were violating the fundamental principles of a democratic society and that the NLD had to fight terrorism as a national duty.

The NLD statement said that “with calmness, dignity and maturity, the NLD has faced the opportunities, potentialities, prospects as well as twists and turns, uncertainties, and sensitivities that are typical of a democratic transition.”

The NLD party has struggled through difficult years in decades past and won the trust, loyalty and broad support of the people. It has had to revive the identity and grandeur of the country, which had faded for so many years, the statement read.

The National League for Democracy was born out of the political tumult of 1988, when a massive pro-democracy uprising rocked the nation and toppled the government of Gen Ne Win. It subsequently contested an election in 1990 and emerged victorious in a landslide, winning 392 of 485 seats.

The military regime and party leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi went on to spend much of the next two decades under house arrest, and the results of the 1990 election were nullified.

The party boycotted the 2010 election but decided to join a by-election in 2012, winning 43 of the the 44 seats it contested. The NLD party won by a landslide in the 2015 election and received two-thirds of the contested seats.

The 29th anniversary party statement said the party continued its 2015 general election manifesto pledge to strive systematically for an administrative system that will protect people fairly, for healthy development and also for a Constitution that guarantees ethnic rights, internal peace, and peaceful and secure coexistence of all national people.

The party had repeatedly said it would prioritize national reconciliation, establishing rule of law and internal peace, as well as continuing its push to amend the Constitution.

“With unwavering belief, we have proceeded toward a new future which we are responsible to carve ourselves,” the NLD statement affirmed.